Category: Homemade Recipes

No butter, no sugar fluffy pancake recipe.

Fluffy pancakes. One of the most satisfying breakfast options in my humble opinion.

Pass the lips and onto the hips, I know, I know. But really, this recipe is preeeeeetty healthy; no sugar, no egg yolks, no butter but still fluffy and delicious.

# – Fluffy pancakes!!

Without further ado, here’s how to cook these pancakes.

The ingredients:

  • 2 cups of flour
  • 1 3/4 cup of water or milk
  • 1 teaspoon of baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon of salt
  • 2 egg whites

    • # – Sift the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl, twice.

    # – Gently stir in the water or milk.

    # – With a wooden spoon, stir mixture till smooth. The desired consistency is achieved when when a clear line is created after you run your finger on the back of the spoon. If it’s still too thick or too thin, add more flour or liquid accordingly.

    # – In the meantime, beat the egg whites.

    # – When it has reached soft peaks, add the salt.

    # – Continue beating till it holds up when you hold the bowl upside down :D Good luck!

    # – Gently fold in the egg whites into the flour mixture. Fold until it resembles a fully combined, thick, fluffy batter. Be gentle when you’re folding the egg whites in as you do not want to beat all the air out.

    # – Heat up a greased non-stick pan over medium heat and pour one ladle of batter into it. Just let it the batter spread on its own, do not tilt the pan or try to spread it with the back of the ladle.

    # – Let the batter cooks until the top side bubbles and forms holes. This is the sign that it’s time to turn the pancake to cook the other side :) It’s advisable to time how long it took for the batter to form holes so you’d know how long to cook the other side later.

    # – Cook the other side with the same amount of time it took the top to bubble previously.

    # – Serve with whatever you want, fruits, jam etc but I served mine with too many crispy streaky bacons and a sunny side up :D

    # – Drizzle honey or maple syrup all over. HHmmmmm.

    # – Time to eat!

    Hope you like these fluffy, pillowy pancakes ;)

    Make your own crunchy caramel popcorn!!!

    It started with Fiqa bringing back some Garrett’s popcorn from Singapore for us to try. OMG the popcorn was gorgeous!!

    But since we were sharing the popcorn and I’m like really chinese when it comes to stuff like this, I didn’t eat more.

    I pretended that I was considerate and that I cared about my friends and like I was totally into this thing called “sharing”.

    No, it’s all a BIG FAT LIE!

    So, because I didn’t get to satiate my popcorn craving, I decided to make some myself, at home!

    # – Homemade caramel popcorn.

    For the popcorn:

  • 1/4 cup of dry corn kernels (easily found at spice section in supermarkets)
  • 60 ml of cooking oil

    • For the caramel:

  • 125 grams of salted butter
  • 3/4 cup of demerara sugar (you can use ordinary sugar)
  • 2 tablespoons of honey
  • 1 teaspoon of paprika, optional
  • 1 teaspoon of black pepper, optional
  • 1 teaspoon of chilli powder, optional

    •  

    # – First, pour oil into a medium sized saucepan and heat it until it’s very hot. To test if the oil is hot enough, throw in one corn kernel and when it pops, the oil is ready.

    # – When the oil is ready, pour in all the dry corn kernels and immediate close with a lid.

    # – Hold the lid down. Soon you will hear a lot of popping sounds. Truly SATISFYING music! With your fingers firmly over the lid, hold the saucepan handle with your other hand and shake the pot gently but away from the flame (imagine you’re holding the reins while riding a horse). You do not want to burn the popcorn as the smell is absolutely rancid!

    # – When the popping sounds have stopped, that means the popcorn are now done! Like magic!

    # – Now, pour the plain popcorn into a large mixing bowl and allow to cool down.

    # – In the meantime, throw in all the ingredients for the caramel into a saucepan and heat them up on medium heat. I flavoured my caramel with paprika, pepper and chilli powder to give it a bit of kick amidst the sweetness. Be creative and experiment with your favourite spices!

    # – Constantly stir the mixture.

    # – Stir until the mixture has completely melted, turned a darker shade of brown and quite bubbly (about 10 minutes). Some people like to push their caramel to the darkest end (for a richer, slightly bitter taste) but it’s quite easy to burn them (nasty bitter taste) so becareful!

    # – Immediately pour the caramel into the popcorn and mix them up with 2 large metal spoons until popcorn are evenly coated. You’re handling extremely hot mixture here so be careful! Constantly stir them to loosen the popcorn so they won’t stick together until the caramel has cooled down & hardened.

    # – If you find the popcorn abit greasy, just pour them onto a kitchen towel to absorb the oil a bit.

    # – Homemade caramel popcorn, DONE!

    It’s crazy easy, crazy cheap, crazy delicious, crazy crunchy and best of all, it’s homemade.

    You can flavour the caramel however you want, you can even experiment with savoury flavours. This is not really conducive to my slow carb diet but sometimes a girl gotta have her popcorn!

     
     
     
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    The crazy simple delicious 3 bean salad recipe.

    We’ve been eating a lot of beans thanks to the slow carb diet. Basically, we can still eat carbs, mainly to keep us from getting hungry but those carbs must be of “slow carb” type, which really means it has low glycemic index (low GI).

    Low GI foods release glucose into your bloodstream more slowly and steadily, preventing that dreaded sugar high —> sugar crash phenemenon that one experiences after eating refined junk food.

    So ingredients like beans and mushrooms are generally low GI and are permitted in our diet.

    This 3-bean salad is easy to whip up and so, so, so delicious. It changed my perception of beans entirely! Yes, I was beginning to get really sick of beans until I made this dish :)

    # – Crazy simple 3 bean salad.

    For the salad:

  • 3 cans of different beans (I used kidney beans, fava beans & chickpeas)
  • 1 green pepper/capsicum, seeded and chopped
  • 2 small red onion, sliced thinly

    • For the dressing:

  • 1/3 cup of red wine vinegar
  • 1/3 cup of granulated sugar (I used oligofructose, a natural sweetener for health reason)
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

    • # – First, put all ingredients of the dressing in a bowl and whisk till completely combined. Allow it to stand.

    # – Now, throw in the chopped green pepper into a mixing bowl.

    # – Followed by the sliced red onions.

    # – Open the cans of beans and pour it into a strainer. Then rinse them through till the water runs clear.

    # – Pour the beans into the mixing bowl.

    # – Give the dressing a final whisk and pour it all over the salad.

    # – With a spatula, mix it up well making sure the beans are well coated with dressing.

    # – Chill the bean salad for at least an hour before eating.

    # – Serve as a side dish. DELICIOUS!

    # – The salad tasted even more amazing the day after. The beans were chilled through & completely soaked up the dressing.

    Quick with no cooking involved. Absolutely delicious and surprisingly healthy. I’ve made this 3 times so far using different beans.

    Try it out!